Recently I purchased fifty grade B 1950s-era science fiction movies for fifteen dollars. I also recently bought forty 50s era Time magazines for a hundred dollars. But let's talk about the DVDs--in a package called "Sci-Fi Classics" by Mill Creek Entertainment.
Having watched just four of the fifty, I can already recommend this collection to anyone who wants to laugh, become baffled at trying to figure out how anyone could conspire to make anything so bad, wonder at how these trifles ever got shown in a theater, marvel at the unrepentant and continuing fatuousness, try to decipher a connection between the chilling titles (like "The Incredible Petrified World") to the dull doings on screen, and watch, in a historiographic, postmodern manner, the effects of sexism, racism and lousy cinematography at work in a culture struggling with such newfangled phenomena as radiation and the possibility of outer-space travel.
I have laughed out loud at certain moments in these movies: as when a random, large lizard that has nothing to do with the movie puts in a brief, pointless appearance; or when scantily-clad women wrangle in a prurient cat-fight. My wife, a vocal critic of anything that emits even a whiff of sexism, has vowed the films are a disgrace and beneath one's intelligence. Of course she is correct.
But I cannot forego the pleasure of marveling at the wide gap between what is promised (chills, thrills and earthshaking revelations) and what is actually in the movie, usually a tawdry mash-up of tepid acting, embarrassingly poor special effects (no Ray Harryhausen here), nonsensical plot-twists and what appears to be a general heedlessness to the notion that one might actually ask another human to pay money to view the resulting dreck.
Perhaps the most strking example of this canyon-wide gap (at least so far) has been "The Monster that Challenged the World". The monster turned out to be a species of mollusk that grew (because of radiation, as appears to be the rule) to the size of an old gumdrop-shaped Fiat in an inland lake and then tried to escape through an irrigation system. Sure, there were a couple dozen of them. And they could walk on land! And they actually killed some folks. But they were slow, and not that big, and for heaven's sake they were mollusks after all. Besides scaring people to death and strangling a poor doddering old man at a guardpost, the monsters' worst offense was to leave behind a white slime that looked like toothpaste in outsized volume (and was not harmful except to one's sense of aesthetics). This, I submit, is hardly a challenge to the world as much as to the State Agricultural Commission.
But that is all part of the fun.
After a hard day trying to get other people to do what you want them to do (at work or business), or being made to do what other people want you to do (at work or business), why not mix yourself a toddy and sit back to enjoy fifty of these wonderfully idiotic movies guaranteed not to inspire or frighten or connect one to "what's really going on out there" but that may, after the effects of the toddy sets in, cause you to chuckle and smile and knit your brows in wonderment at the cinematic genuine silliness of which our so-called advanced race of creatures is capable.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Saturday, February 20, 2010
The Value of Value
While trying not to knock the ashtray filled with stubbed out Gauloises off the pile of terrifically thick books by Foucault, Sartre and Derrida that is stacked (perhaps metaphorically) on my desk, I shall now attempt to state a value for the concept of Value in a commercial society.
And here it is:
Value is a desired quality that cannot be separated from an object and which therefore gives rise to an intrinsic commercial gravity the weight of which can only be expressed as "cost". Commercial gravity behaves exactly as does natural gravity, expressing itself as a specific ability to attract objects towards its mass.
The Purveyor of Value is always hoping to expand the mass of the valued object, either by manipulating perception of it towards a higher indication of commercial gravity or claiming its value to exist only in aggregate rather than as an array of individual objects.
The Seeker of Value is always hoping to diminish the mass of the valued object, either by denying or downwardly manipulating perception of it towards a lower indication of commercial gravity or by insisting it has no additional value in aggregate.
It is important to note that the essence of "Branding" as a commercial discipline consists entirely of the effort of the Purveyor of Value as described above.
It is equally important to note that the essence of "Employment" or "Purchasing" as a commercial discipline consists entirely of the effort of the Seeker of Value as described above.
It should also be of some interest to individuals that the more they partake of themselves as a "commercial value proposition", and the more they see themselves as the purveyor of such, their value in the commercial equation will rise in an amount equal to their apprehension of this fact.
It should also be noted that everything and every one (e.g every viable entity) in a commercial society possesses a "brand" suitable for purveyance.
The "Branding" proposition goes something like this:
"We the Purveyors (the "Brand") have pooled vast resources in order to develop desirable objects that cannot be had from any other source. These objects are not mere assemblages of individual units of value but a conglomeration of interlocking value items that create an overall value many times in excess of the value that each related item might have on its own. Moreover, this brand is equal to a promise made to the desiring party that the quest for value shall be satisfied upon payment of the price extracted for use and/or possession of the branded object."
To which the answer goes something like:
"We the Seekers (the Consumer or Purchaser) are unconvinced we require the object on which you have spent your resources in a manner unknown and unimportant to us. You have presented us with an object devoid of value except as it suits our perceived requirement; moreover, you have failed to account for all the similarly presented objects available to us, which may or may not fulfill the need we have in a manner more suited to us than the object you have offered. Finally, you offer no basis on which to trust your brand-promise that we'd be satisfied with the exchange should we transmit value to you in the form of payment."
Between these two opposite forces lies the vast, all-consuming universe of activities called The Market, in which the push and pull of the multitudinous Value Objects are exerted upon one another, and in which the value of each is either aggregated or broken down, and in which, finally, after the above two opposing arguments are exhausted to a point of diminishing return of value upon effort, a price for Value is agreed upon.
I personally believe these forces are deeply embedded in all human endeavor and can be proven to exist at every conceivable level of human interaction.
I believe that successful individuals--and successful companies--are those that have apprehended and internalized these tendencies as if they were natural law, and who have exploited the abovementioned principles to best advantage.
Unsuccessful individuals--and unsuccessful companies--are those that have not been sufficiently aware of the primacy of the abovementioned principles, or, having become aware, remain unable to convince enough Seekers of the value of their Value.
From the Seeker or Purchaser side, lack of success stems from an inability to pierce the Brand's "resource allocation" statement and its "value in aggregate" facade; to be gulled overmuch by its Value claims; and by an overwillingness to buy (literally) into the promise offered by the Brand.
Lack of success in this endeavor is commonly referred to as "overpaying" and often exerts a ruinous effect on the Seeker. In fact, failure on the Seeker's part leaves the Seeker more often prone to immediate catastrophe than failure on the Purveyor's part, which often enough plays out over a longer period of diminishing Value.
If the forces so described above (eg. the value of Value) were in some manner to cease acting, the world of humans would rapidly be rid of such contrivances as nations, corporations, religions, families and any other associations that rely on organizational principles any much more complex than those present in, say, an association of baboons on the veldt.
And it remains to be seen whether the veldt baboons do not partake of the inherent value of Value in some way as well.
And here it is:
Value is a desired quality that cannot be separated from an object and which therefore gives rise to an intrinsic commercial gravity the weight of which can only be expressed as "cost". Commercial gravity behaves exactly as does natural gravity, expressing itself as a specific ability to attract objects towards its mass.
The Purveyor of Value is always hoping to expand the mass of the valued object, either by manipulating perception of it towards a higher indication of commercial gravity or claiming its value to exist only in aggregate rather than as an array of individual objects.
The Seeker of Value is always hoping to diminish the mass of the valued object, either by denying or downwardly manipulating perception of it towards a lower indication of commercial gravity or by insisting it has no additional value in aggregate.
It is important to note that the essence of "Branding" as a commercial discipline consists entirely of the effort of the Purveyor of Value as described above.
It is equally important to note that the essence of "Employment" or "Purchasing" as a commercial discipline consists entirely of the effort of the Seeker of Value as described above.
It should also be of some interest to individuals that the more they partake of themselves as a "commercial value proposition", and the more they see themselves as the purveyor of such, their value in the commercial equation will rise in an amount equal to their apprehension of this fact.
It should also be noted that everything and every one (e.g every viable entity) in a commercial society possesses a "brand" suitable for purveyance.
The "Branding" proposition goes something like this:
"We the Purveyors (the "Brand") have pooled vast resources in order to develop desirable objects that cannot be had from any other source. These objects are not mere assemblages of individual units of value but a conglomeration of interlocking value items that create an overall value many times in excess of the value that each related item might have on its own. Moreover, this brand is equal to a promise made to the desiring party that the quest for value shall be satisfied upon payment of the price extracted for use and/or possession of the branded object."
To which the answer goes something like:
"We the Seekers (the Consumer or Purchaser) are unconvinced we require the object on which you have spent your resources in a manner unknown and unimportant to us. You have presented us with an object devoid of value except as it suits our perceived requirement; moreover, you have failed to account for all the similarly presented objects available to us, which may or may not fulfill the need we have in a manner more suited to us than the object you have offered. Finally, you offer no basis on which to trust your brand-promise that we'd be satisfied with the exchange should we transmit value to you in the form of payment."
Between these two opposite forces lies the vast, all-consuming universe of activities called The Market, in which the push and pull of the multitudinous Value Objects are exerted upon one another, and in which the value of each is either aggregated or broken down, and in which, finally, after the above two opposing arguments are exhausted to a point of diminishing return of value upon effort, a price for Value is agreed upon.
I personally believe these forces are deeply embedded in all human endeavor and can be proven to exist at every conceivable level of human interaction.
I believe that successful individuals--and successful companies--are those that have apprehended and internalized these tendencies as if they were natural law, and who have exploited the abovementioned principles to best advantage.
Unsuccessful individuals--and unsuccessful companies--are those that have not been sufficiently aware of the primacy of the abovementioned principles, or, having become aware, remain unable to convince enough Seekers of the value of their Value.
From the Seeker or Purchaser side, lack of success stems from an inability to pierce the Brand's "resource allocation" statement and its "value in aggregate" facade; to be gulled overmuch by its Value claims; and by an overwillingness to buy (literally) into the promise offered by the Brand.
Lack of success in this endeavor is commonly referred to as "overpaying" and often exerts a ruinous effect on the Seeker. In fact, failure on the Seeker's part leaves the Seeker more often prone to immediate catastrophe than failure on the Purveyor's part, which often enough plays out over a longer period of diminishing Value.
If the forces so described above (eg. the value of Value) were in some manner to cease acting, the world of humans would rapidly be rid of such contrivances as nations, corporations, religions, families and any other associations that rely on organizational principles any much more complex than those present in, say, an association of baboons on the veldt.
And it remains to be seen whether the veldt baboons do not partake of the inherent value of Value in some way as well.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Saints, Snowmaggedon and Climate Change
The New Orleans Saints won the Superbowl in order to prove that serious climate change is challenging humanity.
Or what I really meant to say was that, by bringing attention to the City of New Orleans just as the Nation's Capital was getting buried in an epic snow, the Who Dat Saints also brought attention to the fact that the Big Easy has still not recovered from the Big Flood engineered by the Army Corp of same after their ill-constructed levees broke during a visit from a nasty tourist named Katrina.
Or what I really meant to say was that, despite the shallow (or on-purpose cynical) misunderstanding of the nature and implications of climate change by those who are quite certain it has nothing to do with billions of tons of carbon being pumped into the atmosphere to support our air-conditioned style of Modern Living, the confluence of both overheated tropical storming and overcooled, overmoistened northern storming simply suggests that yes: much as the scientific models have predicted, we are now subject to a pattern of weather extremes that rather strongly suggest a period of climate flux.
Or what I am really getting at is, I am not quite convinced myself that the matter of weather patterns parting from their historical norms is due more to pollution than to over-attention (or new attention, anyway) much as, say "autism" is a diagnosis based on perception and new attention rather than a sudden huge increase in sickly children. Does anybody recall there were always those kids in class who were somehow just "different" or unfortunately "weird" or oddly "quiet"? Now they're victims of "autism spectrum syndrome". Fine. But they're still the same kinds of kids, and probably showing up in the same amounts.
Or what I am really saying is, even though I am not convinced that humans are the cause of global climate change, I think it more or less stands to reason we may have a role in it. And in a way, the whole "global warming" debate obscures the real action item for the industrialized carbon-based beings swarming the planet these days (eg. us), and that is: we really should be taking better care of the place.
For instance, does the threat of global warning make it any less shameful that we chop down forests to make BK Broilers, destroy delicate habitats to line our floors with "beautiful, durable hardwood" slats, dump plastic in the ocean in such quantities that we have created poison-leeching mini-continents drifting in the mid-Pacific, belch enough smoke into the air such that Beijing is a massive cancer-ward while East L.A. reeks half the year in filthy smog, reduce the habitats of brave and beautiful animals like the Siberian Tiger to the point where as a species they are hanging on by a claw?
It does not.
For the sake of the Tiger and the Vu Quong Ox and for those who must breathe filthy air and for the sake of the cruelly torn jungles and forests, can we please take a step back and ask how we might stop the wantonness of our destruction? Does it really matter if we are responsible for Katrina, or Snowmaggedon, or the shrinking of the ice-caps?
It does not.
We just have to stop killing and burning and smoking it up on the massive scale we have become accustomed to, not because we know it's going to cause a climate problem, but because it's ugly and stupid and in the end, immoral.
Climate change? Maybe. Throw a little love to the tigers? Yes.
And by the way: Who Dat?
Or what I really meant to say was that, by bringing attention to the City of New Orleans just as the Nation's Capital was getting buried in an epic snow, the Who Dat Saints also brought attention to the fact that the Big Easy has still not recovered from the Big Flood engineered by the Army Corp of same after their ill-constructed levees broke during a visit from a nasty tourist named Katrina.
Or what I really meant to say was that, despite the shallow (or on-purpose cynical) misunderstanding of the nature and implications of climate change by those who are quite certain it has nothing to do with billions of tons of carbon being pumped into the atmosphere to support our air-conditioned style of Modern Living, the confluence of both overheated tropical storming and overcooled, overmoistened northern storming simply suggests that yes: much as the scientific models have predicted, we are now subject to a pattern of weather extremes that rather strongly suggest a period of climate flux.
Or what I am really getting at is, I am not quite convinced myself that the matter of weather patterns parting from their historical norms is due more to pollution than to over-attention (or new attention, anyway) much as, say "autism" is a diagnosis based on perception and new attention rather than a sudden huge increase in sickly children. Does anybody recall there were always those kids in class who were somehow just "different" or unfortunately "weird" or oddly "quiet"? Now they're victims of "autism spectrum syndrome". Fine. But they're still the same kinds of kids, and probably showing up in the same amounts.
Or what I am really saying is, even though I am not convinced that humans are the cause of global climate change, I think it more or less stands to reason we may have a role in it. And in a way, the whole "global warming" debate obscures the real action item for the industrialized carbon-based beings swarming the planet these days (eg. us), and that is: we really should be taking better care of the place.
For instance, does the threat of global warning make it any less shameful that we chop down forests to make BK Broilers, destroy delicate habitats to line our floors with "beautiful, durable hardwood" slats, dump plastic in the ocean in such quantities that we have created poison-leeching mini-continents drifting in the mid-Pacific, belch enough smoke into the air such that Beijing is a massive cancer-ward while East L.A. reeks half the year in filthy smog, reduce the habitats of brave and beautiful animals like the Siberian Tiger to the point where as a species they are hanging on by a claw?
It does not.
For the sake of the Tiger and the Vu Quong Ox and for those who must breathe filthy air and for the sake of the cruelly torn jungles and forests, can we please take a step back and ask how we might stop the wantonness of our destruction? Does it really matter if we are responsible for Katrina, or Snowmaggedon, or the shrinking of the ice-caps?
It does not.
We just have to stop killing and burning and smoking it up on the massive scale we have become accustomed to, not because we know it's going to cause a climate problem, but because it's ugly and stupid and in the end, immoral.
Climate change? Maybe. Throw a little love to the tigers? Yes.
And by the way: Who Dat?
Thursday, January 28, 2010
A Waste of Precious Resources
The following actors must stop making movies immediately or face heavy fines levied by the MovieGoing Authorities:
Harrison Ford
Robert DeNiro
John Travolta
Mel Gibson
Jim Carey
Anthony Hopkins
They are, as a rule, talented. But long ago they became caricatures and hacks, and now must be stopped before they waste any further precious movie-making resources.
Is there any reason in the world why we should have to look at Ford's face again as he plays very tiresomely the Serious Adult in the room--avenging a threat to his or someone else's family?
Is there any reason why we should have to endure DeNiro mugging emptily in a movie he neither cares about nor adds anything to but the presence of his Name?
Can we just pretend Travolta's career consists of the several good movies he made (Saturday Night Fever; Pulp Fiction; Urban Cowboy) and "Welcome Back, Cotter"--and leave it at that?
Mel Gibson is a force that must be stopped--he has rarely played anything but a dark avenger adding nothing at all to the world but anger and violence and unhealthy vengeance. Did I mention vengeance?
Jim Carey was good on a half-hour TV comedy-variety show years ago that featured the Wayans brothers. After that, he had Dumb and Dumber. And then an undifferentiated string of movies, some animated, some not, in which he was grossly scatological and eminently not funny (and the overrated Truman Show). Pull the plug. Kill the Mask.
Anthony Hopkins: you died as an actor after playing Hannibal Lecter. You ate your career with Fava beans. Please retire to your English manor.
Once these abovementioned usurpers have been banished from the movie set, perhaps some younger, more-deserving, interesting actors can take their place in front of the camera; and our precious moviemaking resources can be utilized in the creation of valuable entertainment product instead of more rounds of depressing dreck destined rapidly for the bottom rack in the DVD section of BestBuy.
Harrison Ford
Robert DeNiro
John Travolta
Mel Gibson
Jim Carey
Anthony Hopkins
They are, as a rule, talented. But long ago they became caricatures and hacks, and now must be stopped before they waste any further precious movie-making resources.
Is there any reason in the world why we should have to look at Ford's face again as he plays very tiresomely the Serious Adult in the room--avenging a threat to his or someone else's family?
Is there any reason why we should have to endure DeNiro mugging emptily in a movie he neither cares about nor adds anything to but the presence of his Name?
Can we just pretend Travolta's career consists of the several good movies he made (Saturday Night Fever; Pulp Fiction; Urban Cowboy) and "Welcome Back, Cotter"--and leave it at that?
Mel Gibson is a force that must be stopped--he has rarely played anything but a dark avenger adding nothing at all to the world but anger and violence and unhealthy vengeance. Did I mention vengeance?
Jim Carey was good on a half-hour TV comedy-variety show years ago that featured the Wayans brothers. After that, he had Dumb and Dumber. And then an undifferentiated string of movies, some animated, some not, in which he was grossly scatological and eminently not funny (and the overrated Truman Show). Pull the plug. Kill the Mask.
Anthony Hopkins: you died as an actor after playing Hannibal Lecter. You ate your career with Fava beans. Please retire to your English manor.
Once these abovementioned usurpers have been banished from the movie set, perhaps some younger, more-deserving, interesting actors can take their place in front of the camera; and our precious moviemaking resources can be utilized in the creation of valuable entertainment product instead of more rounds of depressing dreck destined rapidly for the bottom rack in the DVD section of BestBuy.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Avatar in Massachusettes
Yes, the name of the state is misspelled.
And here is a quote from science fiction editor Annalee Newitz (io9dotcom) via an article in the NYT:
"In movies like “Avatar,” Ms. Newitz wrote, “humans are the cause of alien oppression and distress,” until a white man “switches sides at the last minute, assimilating into the alien culture and becoming its savior.”
Whatever else viewers might say about Avatar--that it is anti-imperialist, pro-animist, anti-monotheism and all the rest--the fact is as Newitz implies: it's a white-guilt/redemption classic. Personally I found this theme rather obvious and that the obviousness of it detracted from the overall awe one could not help feeling for its complex visual beauty.
And now a perhaps tenuous but not, I think, altogether inappropriate segue to the Great Democractic Debacle in the Bay State where the now-forever-ignominious Ms. Coakley could not withstand the former nude male model's White Manly Pickup Truck onslaught in an election that could spindle National Health by allowing a Teabagger to take the place of the Great Healthcare Lion who recently and most ironically passed on just before he might vote on the Great Cause of his long tenure in that August Body.
In short, is it really possible that there is now a Palinesque male Junior Senator in the senate seat formerly held by Ted Kennedy? Wake up, ye thoughtful losers, for it has come to this. And many now say major health care reform, long and idiotically allowed to be held hostage by the GOP while an ineffectual near-supermajority of Democrats could not seem to do what any Republican Majority would have done (smash through whatever they wanted with 51 senate votes), may be in serious peril. Speaker Pelosi, facing us with an ever-less-believable rictus, says not to worry. However, if I am a fan of major health care reform, I am worried. And of course worried about the newly minted good fortune of the Grand Old Teabaggers--in "Massachusettes", where once a band of outraged taxpayers threw tea in the water dressed as "Indians" to protest levies of the Crown.
Let us now examine the manner in which the magnificently inept Coakley campaign misspelled the name of its own state in an ad during the campaign. And then let us think about the white-male-savior fantasy at the heart of What's-His-Name's unexpected victory.
The Hellenistic world, and especially the U.S.A. which is populated by all the peoples of the planet but governed by laws descendant from the Greek, has often been a theater of battle between pantheism and monotheism (to wit: Salem; slaughter of animist Native Americans; forced-Christianization of chained and shackled Africans). Monotheism has in this country been not only ascendant but unforgiving until quite recently (the 1960s), when all manner of thought not including a White Male Leader fairly exploded upon the general consciousness and wrecked the cut-grass and steak-for-dinner oppressiveness of the White Male Power Paradise.
It has gone poorly for the Traditional White Male ever since. Gone missing is his assumed throne at the pinnacle of creation as the landscape is re-shaped by powerful women, gay men and educated, powerful men of color . And now with an Articulate (please make careful note of the quote marks) "Negro" in the White House, the fortunes of the White Male may have come to seem almost permanently eclipsed.
But this White Male Monotheist is a fighting man if nothing else. His Templars took Jerusalem from the Saracens once, and today in America his Teabaggers are determined to take Washington from the Freaks and Geeks if it means the very destruction of the nation itself.
And here, in the cross-hairs, is poor Martha Coakley, unassuming Generic Female Candidate in what Democrats foolishly thought was a race they owned. This was the bluest of blue states after all--and this election was for the rightful Kennedy Seat! The trusty blue Commonwealth, it seemed to Dems, would elect a ham sandwich to that seat if the Dems told them to, would they not?
Not.
What has happened was this:
Martha early established her credentials as a nitwit and worse (by Teabagger lights), a female nitwit, by incorrectly feminizing the name of the state: Massachusettes (with that effete little extra "e" as if spelling "crepe suzettes"). Then she proceeded to assume, oddly like Hillary did not long ago, that the race was hers, and that there was no real need to compete.
Now here came the White Male Savior. And the guilt-ridden voters of Massachusetts, having allowed their state to help stain the purity of White Male Domination by helping elect a "different type" of man to the Presidency, saw their chance to "switch sides" and "save" themselves from a fate unendurable--that being a world ruled by laws signed by that fateful "Other": that guy with the near-unendurable name, Barack Hussein Obama.
And in his pickup truck he rode, Mr. Male Nude Model, and he was their Avatar, and they lived through him as he crunched and punched his way through the cobwebs of misspelling and ineptitude characterized by the inept and vague and miserable Coakley, and he won a Great Victory for the White Male and probably Monotheism by somehow convincing the N'avi of Massachusetts that he was one of them.
And that is how the Avatar came to Massachusettes.
And here is a quote from science fiction editor Annalee Newitz (io9dotcom) via an article in the NYT:
"In movies like “Avatar,” Ms. Newitz wrote, “humans are the cause of alien oppression and distress,” until a white man “switches sides at the last minute, assimilating into the alien culture and becoming its savior.”
Whatever else viewers might say about Avatar--that it is anti-imperialist, pro-animist, anti-monotheism and all the rest--the fact is as Newitz implies: it's a white-guilt/redemption classic. Personally I found this theme rather obvious and that the obviousness of it detracted from the overall awe one could not help feeling for its complex visual beauty.
And now a perhaps tenuous but not, I think, altogether inappropriate segue to the Great Democractic Debacle in the Bay State where the now-forever-ignominious Ms. Coakley could not withstand the former nude male model's White Manly Pickup Truck onslaught in an election that could spindle National Health by allowing a Teabagger to take the place of the Great Healthcare Lion who recently and most ironically passed on just before he might vote on the Great Cause of his long tenure in that August Body.
In short, is it really possible that there is now a Palinesque male Junior Senator in the senate seat formerly held by Ted Kennedy? Wake up, ye thoughtful losers, for it has come to this. And many now say major health care reform, long and idiotically allowed to be held hostage by the GOP while an ineffectual near-supermajority of Democrats could not seem to do what any Republican Majority would have done (smash through whatever they wanted with 51 senate votes), may be in serious peril. Speaker Pelosi, facing us with an ever-less-believable rictus, says not to worry. However, if I am a fan of major health care reform, I am worried. And of course worried about the newly minted good fortune of the Grand Old Teabaggers--in "Massachusettes", where once a band of outraged taxpayers threw tea in the water dressed as "Indians" to protest levies of the Crown.
Let us now examine the manner in which the magnificently inept Coakley campaign misspelled the name of its own state in an ad during the campaign. And then let us think about the white-male-savior fantasy at the heart of What's-His-Name's unexpected victory.
The Hellenistic world, and especially the U.S.A. which is populated by all the peoples of the planet but governed by laws descendant from the Greek, has often been a theater of battle between pantheism and monotheism (to wit: Salem; slaughter of animist Native Americans; forced-Christianization of chained and shackled Africans). Monotheism has in this country been not only ascendant but unforgiving until quite recently (the 1960s), when all manner of thought not including a White Male Leader fairly exploded upon the general consciousness and wrecked the cut-grass and steak-for-dinner oppressiveness of the White Male Power Paradise.
It has gone poorly for the Traditional White Male ever since. Gone missing is his assumed throne at the pinnacle of creation as the landscape is re-shaped by powerful women, gay men and educated, powerful men of color . And now with an Articulate (please make careful note of the quote marks) "Negro" in the White House, the fortunes of the White Male may have come to seem almost permanently eclipsed.
But this White Male Monotheist is a fighting man if nothing else. His Templars took Jerusalem from the Saracens once, and today in America his Teabaggers are determined to take Washington from the Freaks and Geeks if it means the very destruction of the nation itself.
And here, in the cross-hairs, is poor Martha Coakley, unassuming Generic Female Candidate in what Democrats foolishly thought was a race they owned. This was the bluest of blue states after all--and this election was for the rightful Kennedy Seat! The trusty blue Commonwealth, it seemed to Dems, would elect a ham sandwich to that seat if the Dems told them to, would they not?
Not.
What has happened was this:
Martha early established her credentials as a nitwit and worse (by Teabagger lights), a female nitwit, by incorrectly feminizing the name of the state: Massachusettes (with that effete little extra "e" as if spelling "crepe suzettes"). Then she proceeded to assume, oddly like Hillary did not long ago, that the race was hers, and that there was no real need to compete.
Now here came the White Male Savior. And the guilt-ridden voters of Massachusetts, having allowed their state to help stain the purity of White Male Domination by helping elect a "different type" of man to the Presidency, saw their chance to "switch sides" and "save" themselves from a fate unendurable--that being a world ruled by laws signed by that fateful "Other": that guy with the near-unendurable name, Barack Hussein Obama.
And in his pickup truck he rode, Mr. Male Nude Model, and he was their Avatar, and they lived through him as he crunched and punched his way through the cobwebs of misspelling and ineptitude characterized by the inept and vague and miserable Coakley, and he won a Great Victory for the White Male and probably Monotheism by somehow convincing the N'avi of Massachusetts that he was one of them.
And that is how the Avatar came to Massachusettes.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
http://www.clintonfoundation.org/haitiearthquake/
In the past few days, Bubba Clinton has been reported to to have said some rather unsavory things about the Hawaiian Who Would Be President to the late Lion of the Senate, but except for those who have eyes only for their own belly-buttons, none of that matters now.
The title of this post tells it all. Or you can text HAITI to 20222 for a quick $10 donation.
Go there and donate, unless you want to tell your grandchildren you did absolutely nothing for the victims of probably the worst disaster in this hemisphere in the past fifty years.
This one blows away the tsunami. It may not be as photo-tragic or epochal politically as the attacks on Lower Manhattan, and it may not be as evil as Rwandan genocide, Darfur or any number of atrocious acts committed by people against other people.
But this one has devastation on a scale almost unimaginable, in a land of poverty almost beyond belief. It is the near-wholesale destruction of a national capital populated by upwards of 2 million. It is the collapse of the National Palace. It is the falling-in of the roof of the National Cathedral. It is street after street, mile after mile, of flattened houses and buildings that had poorly been constructed and that crumbled each to dust during the mad shaking and aftershocks of a huge 7.0 temblor--the worst in that nation in 200 years (more or less since its liberation from the great and wonderful France)--and trapping within untold thousands of hapless innocents. It is the instant homelessness and heartbreak of a multitude.
A writer at the Daily Beast says that France was actually collecting REPARATIONS from Haiti until 1947, and that it ought to pay back every cent of that 22 billion in "reparations" right now, cash on the barrelhead.
Indeed.
For now, please go to Bubba's place and loosen up your wallet for Haiti. I know I am.
The title of this post tells it all. Or you can text HAITI to 20222 for a quick $10 donation.
Go there and donate, unless you want to tell your grandchildren you did absolutely nothing for the victims of probably the worst disaster in this hemisphere in the past fifty years.
This one blows away the tsunami. It may not be as photo-tragic or epochal politically as the attacks on Lower Manhattan, and it may not be as evil as Rwandan genocide, Darfur or any number of atrocious acts committed by people against other people.
But this one has devastation on a scale almost unimaginable, in a land of poverty almost beyond belief. It is the near-wholesale destruction of a national capital populated by upwards of 2 million. It is the collapse of the National Palace. It is the falling-in of the roof of the National Cathedral. It is street after street, mile after mile, of flattened houses and buildings that had poorly been constructed and that crumbled each to dust during the mad shaking and aftershocks of a huge 7.0 temblor--the worst in that nation in 200 years (more or less since its liberation from the great and wonderful France)--and trapping within untold thousands of hapless innocents. It is the instant homelessness and heartbreak of a multitude.
A writer at the Daily Beast says that France was actually collecting REPARATIONS from Haiti until 1947, and that it ought to pay back every cent of that 22 billion in "reparations" right now, cash on the barrelhead.
Indeed.
For now, please go to Bubba's place and loosen up your wallet for Haiti. I know I am.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Units under Stress--and Sun
Over a lengthy Holiday Season holiday, I found myself relaxing under a pleasant warm sun, in sight of the very pool where John, Paul, George and Ringo splashed for the cameras back when Kennedy had just been shot but the world was going to be all right anyway mostly because of those very moptops.
The hotel is a large, old ratpack haunt where the likes of Ed Sullivan and Jackie Gleason gave shows in the vast ballroom; where The Voice and The Drinker stayed; and that now has been rediscovered by Europeans (and me) as a somewhat offbeat, fairly-well restored three-star that drips Moderne on a relatively unfashionable stretch of Collins Avenue well to the north of the iniquity and madness of Ocean Drive. At the entrance, shiny new cars are lined up for valet parking; across the street are some rather humble but satisfying Brazilian-themed restaurants and markets. Within blocks are a bagel place with a straight-outta-Flatbush owner, an American bar and grille, a Chinese place that seems to have been ported in from somewhere along Queens Boulevard and a full-blown Sikh-owned headshop/newsstand/notary public that rivals anything in the East Village. Add winter warmth and you can see why I flat loved this neighborhood.
However, as is generally known, South Florida is also one of the two epicenters of egregious overbuilding of condos and houses (the other being Las Vegas). Noticeable even at the vaunted Beach are towers that stand seemingly rather empty and swanky-looking developments that seem in no hurry to be completed. The prices have been keenly pared on all of them and I have it on good authority that the bottom has not yet been reached.
According to my knowledgeable source, whose interaction with HUD and the effort to keep wayward homes from completely going to pot makes him privy to a wealth of information about the market, there are over a hundred thousand units in Dade County alone that are under stress and heading for foreclosure within the next eighteen months. Word is, there is no way that amount of property can be absorbed into the market--meaning that continuing price slippage is inevitable.
The tourist areas are still crowded--and in much better shape now than, say ten or fifteen years ago when Miami Beach was only a ghost of its past and a dream of its future--but there is no shortage of soaped-over storefront windows and bare patches here and there along the beachy highways.
Eventually a home in the oceanside land of perpetual warmth may be in order--but apparently more bargains are on the way. And let's all offer our kind considerations to those who irrationally believed that water plus yearlong sun plus four walls and a roof equaled ever-escalating home-value; then, after we kindly consider their real-estate foolishness, wait until their properties drop to the lowest point we can believe in and then buy them.
The hotel is a large, old ratpack haunt where the likes of Ed Sullivan and Jackie Gleason gave shows in the vast ballroom; where The Voice and The Drinker stayed; and that now has been rediscovered by Europeans (and me) as a somewhat offbeat, fairly-well restored three-star that drips Moderne on a relatively unfashionable stretch of Collins Avenue well to the north of the iniquity and madness of Ocean Drive. At the entrance, shiny new cars are lined up for valet parking; across the street are some rather humble but satisfying Brazilian-themed restaurants and markets. Within blocks are a bagel place with a straight-outta-Flatbush owner, an American bar and grille, a Chinese place that seems to have been ported in from somewhere along Queens Boulevard and a full-blown Sikh-owned headshop/newsstand/notary public that rivals anything in the East Village. Add winter warmth and you can see why I flat loved this neighborhood.
However, as is generally known, South Florida is also one of the two epicenters of egregious overbuilding of condos and houses (the other being Las Vegas). Noticeable even at the vaunted Beach are towers that stand seemingly rather empty and swanky-looking developments that seem in no hurry to be completed. The prices have been keenly pared on all of them and I have it on good authority that the bottom has not yet been reached.
According to my knowledgeable source, whose interaction with HUD and the effort to keep wayward homes from completely going to pot makes him privy to a wealth of information about the market, there are over a hundred thousand units in Dade County alone that are under stress and heading for foreclosure within the next eighteen months. Word is, there is no way that amount of property can be absorbed into the market--meaning that continuing price slippage is inevitable.
The tourist areas are still crowded--and in much better shape now than, say ten or fifteen years ago when Miami Beach was only a ghost of its past and a dream of its future--but there is no shortage of soaped-over storefront windows and bare patches here and there along the beachy highways.
Eventually a home in the oceanside land of perpetual warmth may be in order--but apparently more bargains are on the way. And let's all offer our kind considerations to those who irrationally believed that water plus yearlong sun plus four walls and a roof equaled ever-escalating home-value; then, after we kindly consider their real-estate foolishness, wait until their properties drop to the lowest point we can believe in and then buy them.
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